Policing for Profit
If you haven’t yet heard of Adrian Schoolcraft, you soon will. The former New York City cop is suing the NYC Police Department for $50 million, after they harassed him, demoted him to desk duty and ultimately abducted and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility. His sin? secretly recording police conversations which reveal both manipulation of crime statistics and the enforcement of quotas on petty and dubious crimes that produce income for the department.
Remembering that NYC is considered by many to have the finest police force in the nation (the department itself claims they are “looked upon as the nation’s leader in law enforcement practices”), what does this say about the disturbing state of the relationship between police and the communities they serve around the nation? And serving as de facto revenue agents for the government is hardly the only unraveling thread in this increasingly frayed relationship.
Consider the issue of civil asset forfeiture, which essentially amounts to the government seizing your stuff and keeping it even if you’ve done nothing wrong.
Responding to a recent question about whether asset forfeiture procedures were “fair,” Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch responded that “civil and criminal forfeiture are very important tools of the Department of Justice as well as our state and local counterparts.” Speaking directly about civil asset forfeiture, she claimed that such forfeiture is “done pursuant to supervision by a court, it is done pursuant to court order, and I believe the protections are there.”
What Ms. Lynch considers fair should scare the hell out of you. She has no problem with the government confiscating all of someone’s money on a mere hunch, for years, until the victim proves he broke no laws.
You have to either prove you didn’t do anything wrong to a judge or have the U.S. attorney called to testify before congress – then – presumably out of fear for having to defend her indefensible behavior, she simply drops the case like there was never a problem in the first place.
Having long been in the chorus harshly criticizing President Obama and his Attorney General for their many and varied affronts to freedom and liberty, there is reason to cautiously celebrate one administration/DOJ policy change made by General Holder before he turns the reins over to Ms. Lynch.
Holder recently announced that the federal government will, as a matter of policy, no longer cooperate with state and local police forces to seize people’s property under forfeiture laws, under a certain set of circumstances.
In asset forfeiture, authorities actually proceed against physical property itself, not people. So the police can and do, for instance, seize cash from motorists who have broken no laws. The police say they think the money is tied to illegal activity and are therefore going to take it. Unlike criminal prosecutions where the accused has abundant rights and protections, these are generally civil procedures without the strong protections our system affords criminal defendants. This has led to all manner of abuses in a world where people have to hire expensive private attorneys to recover money the police decided to simply put in their own pockets.
If that does not turn innocent until proven guilty on its head, nothing does.
A number of state legislatures have tried to reign in their state and local police abuse of asset forfeiture proceedings by limiting the types of cases where police can seize assets, and what subsequently happens to them. But the federal government has been directly undermining such efforts by offering to step in and seize assets under federal law, and turning around and giving a huge chunk of the cash or property directly to the police agencies. Sounds like a sales commission or brokerage fee. But these are the types of cases Holder will now limit (unless Lynch reverses course). Conspiring to undermine state protections for civil rights is not appropriate activity for the U.S. Department of Justice, so this policy change is a welcome, if relatively small step forward.
As per my recent column, Obama squandered a golden opportunity in his State of the Union Address to “substantively confront the countries full spectrum of race issues – from the militarization of police to the grand jury system to the cozy relationship between police and prosecutors to race hustlers using these events for their own political gain.” Forfeiture is another of those issues, as is the fundamental reality that more laws and more regulations on our behavior naturally leads to more negative interaction with police.
The politicians are the ones who have laid the groundwork for all this abuse. Eric Garner, a victim of police homicide, is dead because New York legislators enacted laws making it a crime to sell loose cigarettes, and the executive viewed harsh enforcement of that and similar laws as a way to fund their projects and payments.
We would do well to heed George Washington’s words, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” When we collectively enact laws banning some behavior and mandating others, we need to always keep in mind that enforcement of those laws will surely for some people involve violence and perhaps extreme violence. It would be wise then to only prescribe and proscribe our neighbors’ behavior in limited circumstances. Garner should serve as a constant reminder of the point.
This topic will soon be trending because of the Schoolcraft case, which revealed the type of pressure exerted by police authorities not to make sure children are safe, or that drivers weren’t being hazardous, but that a steady stream of income through summonses and arrests would continue.
It is this combination of policing for profit, and enforcement of consensual crimes, chiefly the drug war, which has led us down this road. That’s why police are not trusted in so many communities around the country – they are perceived as an occupying force who ticket or arrest those who have done nothing truly “wrong”. Remember that quaint, and now gauzy, antiquated notion of police as “peace officers”?
It’s all about the bottom line. Responding to assaults or harassment or identity theft is a double loss for the department and the politicians. Each such crime hurts the district commander who has a mandate to reduce crime, and on up the chain of command, through the political leadership – they want crime reduced. Period. Just as important is that such crimes do not generate profit for them.
The cops could instead be writing tickets and making arrests for loosies, or possession of dime bags. These are the types of things the police leadership loves – they are not included in the serious crime statistics, and they bring in lots of revenue for the city. But it is the man on the street who bears the burden of these collection efforts.
The politics of this have gotten ugly. New York City Mayor DeBlasio said he instructed his biracial son to be cautious in dealings with the police, which led the NYPD to engage in a “slowdown” – refusing to write summonses and the like. The result for many has been relief, because people have a little more room to breath without the feeling that the police are right there waiting for any minor violation to ticket and fine them. Such outcomes are the natural and predictable result of policing for profit.
There is a growing sense that police are not doing the jobs we should expect of them in civilized society, but have been behaving more like revenue agents for the city and state. When police act as such, they become agents of oppression instead of helpful protectors of the community, leading to further division and strife between the police and the public.
We need to dramatically reverse course and require the police to focus their attention on enforcing laws for the purpose of protecting and advancing the values of the mass of law-abiding citizens instead of accruing money for the state. The new policy restrictions on asset forfeiture represent a decent start.
